PRO BASKETBALL

PRO BASKETBALL; Fisher With a Reminder: Lakers Are Still Big Shots

By CHRIS BROUSSARD

Published: May 15, 2004

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., May 14—
For the Los Angeles Lakers of Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson, the difference between a championship and failure has often hinged on one shot. When they have been reeling, one astounding basket in the Western Conference playoffs has served as a giant pick-me-up. When they have been rolling, one miss has buried them.

After Derek Fisher's improbable last-second fling saved the Lakers from a monumental collapse Thursday in San Antonio, they are hoping the trend remains true.

''It propels a basketball club,'' Jackson said Friday, one day after Fisher got off a fallaway jumper in four-tenths of a second to give the Lakers a 74-73 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of this Western Conference semifinal series. ''Championship teams generate off of these kinds of things. Our team, in the last four years, has had five or six games like this in the course of the championship runs we've had.''

In the 2000 Western Conference finals, when O'Neal and Bryant were on the verge of becoming part of only the seventh N.B.A. team to lose a series after leading by three games to one, Bryant lofted an alley-oop pass against Portland that O'Neal caught and dunked with one hand. The play highlighted a late-game rally by the Lakers that erased a 16-point third-quarter deficit and catapulted them to the Western Conference championship and the first of three straight N.B.A. titles.

Two years later, when Sacramento was threatening to go ahead by three games to one in the Western Conference finals, a last-second loose ball landed in the hands of Robert Horry behind the 3-point line. Nailing the shot as the buzzer sounded, Horry evened the series, and the Lakers grabbed the momentum and, eventually, their third championship.

Then came last season's breakdown, and to this day, all anyone remembers is Horry coming ever so close to making a potentially game-winning 3-pointer as the clock expired in Game 5 of the conference semifinals against San Antonio. The Lakers had nearly rallied from a 25-point deficit but, deflated by the miss, they lost the series and surrendered their title to the Spurs.

So after going ahead by three games to two in this four-of-seven series, the Lakers, who gave up a 16-point third-quarter lead on Thursday, are hoping Fisher's memorable moment is an omen.

''It felt like it was meant to be,'' Bryant said Friday. ''Last year, maybe it wasn't. Robert's shot goes down in the basket and rattles out. This year, Derek drills it.''

The Lakers have two chances to stay on the road toward fulfilling the prophecy against the Spurs and Tim Duncan, who put the Lakers in a 1-point hole Thursday with an improbable shot of his own with nine-tenths of a second to play. The Lakers, of course, would prefer to end the series Saturday night, when they play host to San Antonio in Game 6.

There are all sorts of signs in addition to Fisher's shot that they will. For one, the Lakers have never failed to win a game that could clinch a series since claiming the title in 2000, a span of 10 straight contests dating to April 29, 2001. Beyond that, they have defeated the Spurs three consecutive times, including two convincing victories this week at the Staples Center. ''We have a killer instinct,'' Bryant said.

Bryant, who played a game-high 47 minutes Thursday, will get himself ready with rest and lots of fluids. Fatigued after making five flights and playing three games since Sunday -- including four back and forth to Eagle, Colo., for a pretrial hearing in his sexual-assault case -- Bryant all but fainted in the Lakers' locker room moments after Game 5, then needed two liters of fluids intravenously to recover.

''Flying around,'' Bryant said, explaining his weariness. ''Phil didn't want to take me out of the game. I wanted to come out. I'm just tired from playing a lot of minutes. But it was well worth it.''

The Spurs filed a protest with the league, claiming that the clock had not started when Fisher caught the ball. The protest was rejected Friday.

When told that Spurs fans were complaining about the basket, Bryant said: ''They need to blame their scorekeeper. They have the homecourt advantage.''

But his reasoning is not applicable. The three referees and the official timekeeper are responsible for starting the clock. Each referee wears a belt pack with a button on it that starts the clock. The timekeeper, who is always hired from one of the 27 teams not playing in that playoff game, has a button on the table. Whoever pushes the button first ends up starting the clock.

Also, the league rules state that no player can catch and shoot the ball with less than three-tenths of a second remaining. It was a Jackson-coached Chicago Bulls team in 1990 that initiated the ruling after the Knicks' Trent Tucker beat them in a regular-season game with a shot with one-tenth of a second to play.

Whether the clock started on time or not, the situation evened itself out because the Lakers lost five-tenths of a second between Duncan's final basket and their inbounds play to Fisher.

The official box score has Duncan's shot falling through the net with nine-tenths of a second left. The clock should have stopped immediately, but it did not stop until only four-tenths remained. Jackson asked the officials for at least seven-tenths of a second, but was rebuffed.

''So it's a pretty moot point,'' Jackson said of the clock controversy.

If the Lakers remain true to their history, Game 6 will be a moot point as well.